CHICAGO – Four more people have pleaded guilty to participating in a massive, years-long gift card scam that left Home Depot stores in the Chicago area losing more than $6 million. All four were given probation, but one also received a prison sentence that was met with time considered served.
We told you about the racket when it surfaced in the spring of 2023. Officials said Home Depot stores in the city were defrauded by scammers who collected $900 credits more than 6,000 times for a single purchase made three years ago.
Officials said the scam started in March 2020 when someone purchased more than $6,000 at the company’s location at 2570 North Elston. Days later, someone returned to the store, claimed the purchase was for a tax-exempt church, and received a $900 gift card for the tax amount. (Strangely, taxes on the purchase were only $555, according to a Chicago police report.)
Then the scam grew and grew, slowly at first.
Unknown individuals used the same coupon to receive $900 gift cards 15 times in 2020. In 2021, the voucher was used 33 times to generate gift vouchers. But the ruse grew significantly in 2022, with 1,372 gift cards issued for $900 in “tax credits” on the same purchase. Last year, Home Depot issued $900 gift cards for the exact same receipt 3,200 times between January 1 and mid-May, when the arrests began.
In the final days of the program, participants became so bold that some cashiers gave out multiple gift cards for the same purchase at once. And some of them even had a copy of the receipt saved on their personal phones so they could issue gift cards to themselves, officials said.
Christiana Westbrooks, 39, pleaded guilty to theft of $100,000 to $500,000 in exchange for two years of probation from Judge Thomas Byrne. Prosecutors said she used her unique bank code last year to spend $900 gift cards on the same receipt more than 1,000 times. She had $2,980 in cash on her when police arrested her and allegedly admitted to receiving $100 for every gift card she spent.
Sharon Dwyer, 47, pleaded guilty to the same charge in exchange for two years of probation plus 206 days from Judge Byrne. Prosecutors alleged she issued more than 1,500 gift cards worth a total of $1.3 million last year. She allegedly received $30 for every gift card she spent during the scam. In addition to giving cards to scammers posing as customers, Dwyer was accused of scanning an image of the 2020 receipt from her phone and issuing $900 worth of gift cards to herself. She had $4,420 in cash on her when police arrested her.
Byrne also gave two years’ probation to 35-year-old Rosa Reynoso-Rodriguez after she pleaded guilty to theft of $10,000 to $100,000. Like most of the other participants, Reynoso-Rodriguez worked at the 2570 North Elston location. Prosecutors said she issued $900 worth of gift cards 313 times, for a total of $281,700, with nearly $50,000 worth of cards issued in one week.
Lamont Thompson, 50, was accused of being one of the “customers” who presented the receipt to receive gift cards. Last year, prosecutors said he received 10 gift cards worth $9,000 on May 10, another 39 cards worth $35,100 during two sessions on May 12, and three cards worth $2,700 on May 15.
When police arrested Thompson, he was carrying 33 Home Depot gift cards worth $29,700, prosecutors said.
He pleaded guilty to theft of $10,000 to $100,000 in exchange for two years of probation from Byrne. Thompson faced a more serious charge of running a business that persistently committed financial crimes, but prosecutors dropped it with his guilty plea.
Two men, Tyler Clark, 26, and Thomas McNeal, 64, pleaded guilty earlier this year and were also given two years’ probation by Byrne.
Officials never publicly explained how the fraudulently issued gift cards were converted into cash, nor did they reveal how the scheme was able to operate for three years and generate thousands of $900 gift cards from a single $6,000 receipt.
